New Blast of Cold Air Invades Midwest U.S.

A frigid blast of Arctic air will bring some of the coldest late February temperatures seen in decades to the eastern 2/3 of the U.S. this week, with temperatures 15 - 30° below normal commonplace. The cold air isn't going anywhere fast, and will stick around through early next week. The cold blast is due to an extreme jet stream pattern we have seen before this winter--a sharp ridge of high pressure over California, and a large trough of low pressure over Eastern North America. This upper air pattern was described by the National Weather Service in Buffalo, New York on Tuesday as one that occurs less than once every 30 years in late February. The intense cold is already affecting the Upper Midwest this Wednesday morning. My vote for worst winter weather of the day goes to Central Minnesota at Alexandria, where a temperature of -8°F this morning combined with winds of 14 mph to make a wind chill of -28°. The winds are expected to increase to 25 - 30 mph Wednesday afternoon with higher gusts, creating blizzard conditions. In Chicago, the intense cold is expected to put the December - February average temperature for this winter below 19°, making the winter of 2013 - 2014 the 3rd coldest winter in the Windy City's history. Only the winters of 1978 - 1979 and 1903 - 1904 were colder.

Figure 1. Great Lake ice cover as seen on February 19, 2014, by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. Ice cover on North America’s Great Lakes reached 88 percent in mid-February 2014—levels not observed since 1994. The average maximum ice extent since 1973 is just over 50 percent. It has surpassed 80 percent just five times in four decades. The lowest average ice extent occurred in 2002, when only 9.5 percent of the lakes froze. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

Rain coming to CaliforniaUnlike previous versions of this extreme jet stream pattern, though, the ridge over the Western U.S. will not be very persistent. The ridge of high pressure over California, which brought numerous record high temperatures for the date on Tuesday, will get broken down by a weak low pressure system on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday and Saturday, a more intense storm system will smash through the ridge, bringing moderate to heavy rain to much of drought-parched California. This storm will then track eastwards, potentially bringing a major snowstorm and destructive ice storm on Monday to Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and portions of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast U.S.

Figure 2. Departure of temperature from average at 2 meters (6.6') as diagnosed by the GFS model at 00 UTC February 26, 2014. A negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) created a sharp kink in the jet stream (Figure 3), which allowed cold air to spill southwards out of the Arctic over the Eastern U.S. Compensating warm air flowed northwards into the Arctic underneath ridges of high pressure over Alaska and Europe. Data/image obtained using Climate Reanalyzer™ (http://cci-reanalyzer.org), Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Orono, Maine.

Figure 3. Winds at a height where the pressure is 250 mb show the axis of the jet stream, seen here at 00 UTC February 26, 2014. A sharp trough of low pressure was present over the Eastern U.S., and unusually strong ridges of high pressure were over the Western U.S. and the North Atlantic. Data/image obtained using Climate Reanalyzer™ (http://cci-reanalyzer.org), Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Orono, Maine.

Wanted: professionals willing to speak about climate change to local groupsIf you are a professional or graduate student with a strong background in climate science, the world needs you to reach out to local audiences at schools, retirement homes, the Chamber of Commerce, etc., and share your expertise. A new initiative by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the United Nations Foundation called climatevoices.org is launching a Science Speakers Network this spring, with the goal of bringing scientists and their local communities together for real dialogue on climate science that speaks to citizens’ current and future well-being and responsibility as members of a community and democracy. Materials for context-setting presentations will be offered as will coaching regarding how to begin conversations about climate change with fellow citizens. If you are interested in volunteering for this network, please go to climatevoices.org and create a profile. Profiles will “go public” when the full web site is launched in April. Once you create a profile, you will be kept up to date on Climate Voices progress including construction of the full web site, availability of presentation materials, webinar coaching, and plans for project launch. For any questions, please contact: Cindy Schmidt (UCAR), cschmidt@ucar.edu. I have my own set of slides I use for such talks that anyone is welcome to borrow from, available at http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2013/climatetalk.ppt.

Quoting 639. oldnewmex:At 5:30 am, temperature at my house in Truckee, CA is 32 F.Snowing, with about one inch on the ground, after raining well into the wee hours of the morning. Probably several more inches in the high country - my house sits at 5900 ft.

I know, right? We got maybe a quarter inch of rain overnight (I was just hauling my you-know-what into the main house to start breakfast about when you posted.) If you look at the pasture not-quite-edge-on, it's starting to look green. (Which is a little early, but the goats aren't complaining. It isn't so much that they're getting more than a nibble, as it is giving them something to DO.)

We're at just about 4000 feet here, no snow, just rain. It woke me up twice during the night, ahhhh.

Why are Lakes Michigan and Ontario relatively open while Superior, Huron, and Erie are practically frozen over? I base this on the photo in this article. It can't be east-west orientation (relative to wind, for example), because Michigan and Ontario are perpendicular (roughly), and Superior is a deep lake while Erie is relatively shallow.

Quoting 703. weathermanwannabe:the single biggest short-term threat facing Man from climate issues is fresh water to drink and for agriculture.

I dont think you'd be the only way saying this as I've read many scientists discussing these issues. Seems very reasonable to me.

Quoting 703. weathermanwannabe:Also remember that the effects of climate change are "regional" in nature. If we do get a "super" El Nino over the next year, we have to think beyond the impacts of a shortened Atlantic hurricane season; California might get a lot of rain recovery the next Winter as a result, but we could also see some brutal drought conditions in the mid-west for the spring and summer of 2015.

I think what's more accurate is to say that climate is global in nature, but what humans tend to feel (and be most impacted by) is weather and climate variability. Humans do not really notice climate changes, but we do notice longer term droughts/wet periods (climate variability) or short term floods, heat waves, and storms (weather). We won't necessarily notice sea level rise, but we will notice when that next storm comes that it causes more flooding than the same storm 20 years prior.

This is one area where we certainly need to do better. Unfortunately our understanding of teleconnections beyond ENSO are still weak. Forecasts for this recent winter across the CONUS are one example.

"Air pollution in parts of China is now so extreme it could lead to conditions similar to a “nuclear winter,” scientists say. The smog that covers the country has become so thick it is impeding photosynthesis, potentially disrupting China’s food supply."

our northern states here could use This energy This winter huh..................Currently geothermal power heats 89%[6] of the houses in Iceland and over 54% of the primary energy used in Iceland comes from geothermal sources. Geothermal power is used for many things in Iceland. 57.4% of the energy is used for space heat, 15.9% is used for electricity, and the remaining amount is used in many miscellaneous areas: swimming pools, fish farms, and greenhouses, for example.[6]

"Air pollution in parts of China is now so extreme it could lead to conditions similar to a “nuclear winter,” scientists say. The smog that covers the country has become so thick it is impeding photosynthesis, potentially disrupting China’s food supply."

Quoting 692. NCstu:It was indisputably greenER due to the medieval warm period.

"Indisputably" is probably not the term you were looking for.We do not have objective precipitation records, vegetation indeces, or objective temperature records back that far, so we can only infer through anecdotes and proxies. We also have to be careful to talk about the same parts of Greenland; many of our proxies are for the ice cap, not the warmer coastal areas, and the coastal areas tend to be where we only have anecdotes. "Greener" is also highly subjective and has little scientific meaning. I will assume that "more natural flora and higher crop suitability" is close to what you meant.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Greenland was more supportive of some flora during the regional warming of the medieval warm period. Temperature reconstructions are not as conclusive; this one from NOAA shows temperatures in the southern portion of Greenland at comparable levels to today.

To my knowledge, almost all of the Norse settlements (and thus, almost all of our anecdotal evidence) was in southern Greenland.

Be careful not to be led astray by looking at proxies alone, however. Proxies respond to climate over several years to decades, and the current change in climate is moving at a rate that will not yet show up accurately. When you look at the instrumental record compared to the proxies, the picture becomes quite clear - Greenland is quickly becoming warmerwarming to the same level as the medieval warm period, and it is looking likely that we've already surpassed that with no end in sight."Indisputably greener" (warmer) is starting to look in dispute.

Quoting 706. fire635:In regards to the wind turbines... has anybody considered that disrupting the hurricane may be a bad thing? Hurricanes have been forming on earth for billions of years. I believe that they are necessary for earth's balance. Screwing with mother nature is not necessarily a good thing. I'm all for ways of manufacturing ways for us to protect ourselves from the storms, but not thinking eliminating the storm is the best way to go about that.

Just look up "Yellowstone mismanagement". Mankind has a penchant for knowing everything there is to know...and then being shown that we are a bunch of idiots.

Quoting 710. LargoFl:I never knew..the USA wants to BUY Greenland?..did you??....................There are other theories as to how Greenland got its name. One theory is that the “green” in Greenland is actually a translation error. The word “grunt” actually means ground and it could be that Greenland was meant to be named Gruntland (or ground land).

The island has never been heavily populated. Much of it is covered by a sheet of ice. The only area that is not covered in ice is only clear because the air is so dry that ice cannot form. Many Native cultures have used the island as a hunting ground and several nations have used the island as a strategic launching point or a base during various conflicts and wars.

The island is currently owned by Denmark despite previous attempts by the United States to purchase the island.

Yep. and if you want to emigrate to Greenland, they are trying to make that easier, but for now I think it is the same as if you wanted to emigrate to Denmark. They need skilled and unskilled labor like crazy. The catch, you have to live on Greenland.

Computer simulations by Professor Mark Z. Jacobson have shown that offshore wind farms with thousands of wind turbines could have sapped the power of three real-life hurricanes, significantly decreasing their winds and accompanying storm surge, and possibly preventing billions of dollars in damages...

...So he went about developing the model further and simulating what might happen if a hurricane encountered an enormous wind farm stretching many miles offshore and along the coast. Amazingly, he found that the wind turbines could disrupt a hurricane enough to reduce peak wind speeds by up to 92 mph and decrease storm surge by up to 79 percent.

Quoting 706. fire635:In regards to the wind turbines... has anybody considered that disrupting the hurricane may be a bad thing? Hurricanes have been forming on earth for billions of years. I believe that they are necessary for earth's balance. Screwing with mother nature is not necessarily a good thing. I'm all for ways of manufacturing ways for us to protect ourselves from the storms, but not thinking eliminating the storm is the best way to go about that.

I believe you are right too , with last year bust season we had very little rain in the summer . Hurricanes bring rain to mid latitudes that would not get as much rain with out them .(ok at times in the British Isles that would be a good thing but others not so much .) I hate the Idea of man ,interfering with nature like that , A step to far ....

Quoting 706. fire635:In regards to the wind turbines... has anybody considered that disrupting the hurricane may be a bad thing? Hurricanes have been forming on earth for billions of years. I believe that they are necessary for earth's balance. Screwing with mother nature is not necessarily a good thing. I'm all for ways of manufacturing ways for us to protect ourselves from the storms, but not thinking eliminating the storm is the best way to go about that.

they are already doing it with the drones according to some bloggers on here..

I never knew..the USA wants to BUY Greenland?..did you??....................There are other theories as to how Greenland got its name. One theory is that the “green” in Greenland is actually a translation error. The word “grunt” actually means ground and it could be that Greenland was meant to be named Gruntland (or ground land).

The island has never been heavily populated. Much of it is covered by a sheet of ice. The only area that is not covered in ice is only clear because the air is so dry that ice cannot form. Many Native cultures have used the island as a hunting ground and several nations have used the island as a strategic launching point or a base during various conflicts and wars.

The island is currently owned by Denmark despite previous attempts by the United States to purchase the island.

It is easy to overinterpret terminology. The phrases “Medieval Warm Period,” “Little Ice Age,” and even “Greenland” have some history behind them. Near the year 1000AD the Norse Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland. Subsistence farming would have been impossible in Greenland in 1900AD, so this is clear evidence of unusual warmth in the North Atlantic region at that time. Similarly, anecdotal evidence of unusually cold winters in the early-modern period in Northern Europe (roughly during the Protestant Reformation) and of temporary advances of glaciers in the European Alps suggested a period of cooler climate there. How large were these climate excursions? How long did they last? How widespread were they? Because we don’t have eyewitnesses at all places in all centuries, scientists have tried to answer these questions with climate-proxy data.

Check out several technologies to store the energy of electricity -- it's the energy you store. Batteries store electricity as chemical energy, pumped storage stores it as potential energy, as does compressed air storage. They're all in use to "store electricity" and when they're used the electricity becomes available at a different time than when it was generated.

In regards to the wind turbines... has anybody considered that disrupting the hurricane may be a bad thing? Hurricanes have been forming on earth for billions of years. I believe that they are necessary for earth's balance. Screwing with mother nature is not necessarily a good thing. I'm all for ways of manufacturing ways for us to protect ourselves from the storms, but not thinking eliminating the storm is the best way to go about that.

Not the expert on GW or climate change but I always say the same mantra; the single biggest short-term threat facing Man from climate issues is fresh water to drink and for agriculture. To the degree that climate change impacts this issue (remember that 1 billion people on Earth get their water for drinking and agriculture from snow pack melt) we might be in some serious trouble at the moment.

Also remember that the effects of climate change are "regional" in nature. If we do get a "super" El Nino over the next year, we have to think beyond the impacts of a shortened Atlantic hurricane season; California might get a lot of rain recovery the next Winter as a result, but we could also see some brutal drought conditions in the mid-west for the spring and summer of 2015.

.UPDATE (REST OF TODAY AND TONIGHT)... 14Z WATER VAPOR AND H4 RAP ANALYSIS SHOWS AN UPPER LEVEL PATTERN DOMINATED BY RIDGING OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE...FOLLOWED DOWNSTREAM BY A LARGE LONGWAVE TROUGH IN CONTROL OF MUCH OF THE EASTERN HALF OF THE NATION. A POTENT AND VERY COLD LOBE OF ENERGY WITHIN THIS TROUGH IS PASSING OVER THE GREAT LAKES THIS MORNING WITH H5 HEIGHTS OF 485-490DM AND 850MB TEMPS AS LOW AS -30. THAT IS COLD FOR THIS LATE IN FEBRUARY...EVEN FOR THE GREAT LAKES REGION. WE WILL SEE JUST A QUICK GLANCING COOL DOWN THE NEXT DAY OR 2 BEFORE A QUICK REBOUND IN TEMPS DURING THE UPCOMING WEEKEND.

AT THE SURFACE...WEAK COLD FRONT IS NOW ANALYZED OVER SOUTH FLORIDA...THROUGH ALL OF OUR FORECAST ZONES. WINDS HAVE SHIFTED NORTH AND NORTHWEST ACROSS THE ENTIRE REGION WITH A COOLER AIRMASS FILTERING SOUTHWARD. TEMPERATURES ARE CURRENTLY IN THE 40S TO THE NORTH OF I-4...RANGING TO THE 50S THROUGH CENTRAL FLORIDA AND IN THE 60S DOWN TOWARD FORT MYERS. COLD AIR ADVECTION AND ABUNDANT CLOUD COVER WILL SLOW THE DIURNAL TEMP RISE AND MAKE TODAY THE COOLEST DAY OF THE WEEK FOR MOST LOCATIONS.

OUR REGION RESIDES ON THE SOUTHERN PERIPHERY OF THE LONGWAVE TROUGH WITHIN A FAST WESTERLY FLOW CONTAINING SEVERAL WEAK IMPULSES STREAMING ACROSS THE GULF OF MEXICO. PLENTY OF LEFT OVER COLUMN MOISTURE WILL ALLOW THESE IMPULSES ALONG WITH A FAVORABLE DIVERGENT UPPER JET STRUCTURE TO PROVIDE A FEW PERIODS LIGHT SHOWERS THROUGH THIS EVENING TO THE FORECAST AREA. THE FIRST IMPULSE THIS MORNING WILL ALIGN WITH THIS JET TO PROVIDE THE BEST CHANCES FOR LIGHT SHOWERS TO THE NORTH OF THE I-4 CORRIDOR...WITH THE SUBSEQUENT FOLLOWING IMPULSES TRENDING MAINLY SOUTH OF THE TAMPA BAY AREA BY THE EVENING HOURS ALONG WITH THE MORE EFFICIENT UPPER DIVERGENCE. THIS TREND IS SHOWN BY THE LATEST RAP/HRRR GUIDANCE...ALONG WITH THE GLOBAL GFS/ECMWF GUIDANCE. DUE TO THIS CONSENSUS AND SUPPORTING SATELLITE TRENDS...THE FORECAST HAS BEEN TRENDED TOWARD THIS PHILOSOPHY. THE WEAKNESS OF EACH IMPULSE...MEANS THAT THEIR SYNOPTIC INFLUENCES WILL BE HIGHLY DEPENDENT ON JUST HOW WELL EACH OF THE NWP GUIDANCE MEMBERS INITIALIZE. WILL BE WATCHING CLOSELY THROUGH THE DAY TO FIND THOSE MEMBERS INITIALIZING THE CENTRAL GULF REGION THE BEST...AND CONTINUE TO TREND TIMING/LOCATION OF THE SHOWER BATCHES THROUGH THE NEXT 12-18 HOURS.

BY THE SECOND HALF OF TONIGHT...MOST OF THE SYNOPTIC SUPPORT FOR LIFT ALONG WITH THE BEST COLUMN MOISTURE DEPARTS TO THE EAST OF THE FORECAST AREA. WILL SHOW ANY LINGERING SHOWER CHANCES ENDING OVER THE SOUTHERN ZONES. SURFACE HIGH PRESSURE WILL BE BUILDING IN FROM THE NORTH WITH A COOL AND DRY AIRMASS BECOMING STRONGLY ESTABLISHED FROM TAMPA BAY NORTHWARD. A FAVORABLE DRAINAGE FLOW PATTERN LOOKS TO BRING ENOUGH COLD AIR SOUTHWARD THAT WE ARE CONCERNED WITH TEMPS LATE NIGHT APPROACHING...OR EVEN DROPPING BELOW FREEZING FOR A FEW HOURS ACROSS PARTS OF LEVY COUNTY. A FREEZE WATCH IS CURRENTLY UP FOR LEVY COUNTY...AND WILL BE LOOKING CLOSELY AT THE 12Z GUIDANCE LATER THIS MORNING TO DETERMINE IF THE LIKELIHOOD OF SUB-FREEZING TEMPS IS HIGH ENOUGH TO WARRANT AND UPGRADE TO A FREEZE WARNING. IN TERMS OF FROST...THE DEWPOINT DEPRESSION IN THE MOS GUIDANCE IS ALMOST TOO GREAT (5-7 DEGREES) TO SUPPORT MUCH FROST FORMATION ACROSS LEVY COUNTY. HOWEVER...IF WE END UP DE-COUPLING THE BOUNDARY LAYER LATE AT NIGHT...THEN THIS DIFFERENCE MAY END UP BEING LESS. SLIGHTLY BETTER CHANCES FOR PATCHY FROST MAY ACTUALLY EXIST SOUTH OF THE FREEZE WATCH ACROSS CITRUS/SUMTER AND HERNANDO COUNTIES WHERE TEMPS ARE EXPECTED TO STAY JUST ABOVE FREEZING...BUT THE DRY AIR INTRUSION WILL BE LESS. WILL ALSO LOOK AT THIS POTENTIAL...AND WILL LIKELY ADD FROST INTO THE GRIDS FURTHER SOUTH THAN IS CURRENTLY FORECAST WITH THE AFTERNOON PACKAGE. THE REST OF THE FORECAST AREA WILL SEE LOW TEMPS IN THE 40S ACROSS CENTRAL FLORIDA AND INTO THE LOWER/MID 50S DOWN TOWARD CHARLOTTE/LEE COUNTIES.

AFTER THE COOL START...FRIDAY WILL BEGIN A SEVERAL DAY STRETCH OF FAIR WEATHER AND QUICKLY MODERATING TEMPERATURES. A GREAT LOOKING WEEKEND IN TERMS OF SENSIBLE WEATHER APPEARS IN STORE.

At 12:00 PM UTC, Subtropical Depression (997 hPa) located at 32.7S 37.9E has 10 minute sustained winds of 30 knots with gusts of 45 knots. The depression is reported as moving south southwest at 7 knots.

Near Gale Force Winds======================45 NM radius from the center, extending up to 90 NM in the northwestern quadrant, up to 165 NM in the southwestern quadrant and up to 240 NM in the southeastern quadrant. Gale force winds locally present in the southwestern quadrant

Additional Information========================The non tropical low pressure area that formed Monday night close to the south-eastern coasts of southern Africa has gained some tropical characteristics during the last 24 hours as deep convection has flared up close to the center and wrapped half the way around the center. This situation has been possible as the environmental shear is easing as the system is currently close to the upper level trough axis.

The system has hybrid characteristics with both latent heat release and baroclinic process involved for sustaining its strength. As usual for this kind of low, the cloud tops are rather warm and the system is over marginal sea surface temperatures in the 24-25C range. The current intensity is based on scatt data of this morning that is showing 30 knots winds over the whole circulation and even 30-35 knots in the southwestern quadrant.

Within the next few days, the system should continue to round the low to mid-level subtropical highs located to its southeast that tend to move eastwards. Friday night, the system should accelerate southwards and merge within a the mid-lat westerlies Saturday night.

This system should still be within a weak vertical wind shear environment for the next 24 hours. After that (Friday night), north to north-westerly shear is expected to strengthen. The system should therefore undergo its extratropical transition.

At 12:00 PM UTC, Tropical Depression 15F (998 hPa) located at 15.7S 179.4E has 10 minute sustained winds of 25 knots. Position fair based on hourly GMS enhanced infrared imagery and peripheral surface reports. The depression is reported as moving north northeast at 7 knots.

Convection remains persistent along the southern flank in past 24 hours. Organization has not improved much in past 24 hours. System lies under an upper ridge, east of an upper trough in a moderate sheared environment. Outflow good to the south but restricted elsewhere. Sea surface temperature is around 30C. Cyclonic circulation extends up to 500 HPA.

Quoting 676. hydrus: From my standpoint, the winters of the 1970,s were brutal. Even though I was living in South Florida, we made many trips to N.J. and New England. I was born in the mid 60,s, but my Father told me that winter in the early 60,s in New England and N.J.was much worse than the late 60,s. The 40,s and 50,s were bad virtually every single year. I realize that this is from 2 peoples standpoint, but many other folks I have spoken with agree on this.

The 40's and the 50's were bad virtually every year??

In what way? In terms of winter weather? If so then you were mistaken because the winters of 1948-49 through 1953-54 were six winters in a row of anomalous warmth still unrivaled in the temperature record.

Quoting 678. hydrus:If they can build such a wind farm, they most likely can find a way to store it. In fact, I bet it would be easier and much less costly to find ways to store the energy as it is to build a colossal wind farm.jmo

The idea i have seen is to convert the extra electricity to either hydrogen or methane and then to ship the methane via conventional gas pipelines to whomever needs it...